What Does Your Culture Look Like?
We live on a corner and almost every summer day as part of my morning exercise, I walk down the side street of our home. The sun is still rising. The dew hasn’t yet vanished from the grass. Everything looks fresh and green. The bushes that we so carefully planted around the perimeter of our home several years ago have grown substantially since the lawn service gave them their spring trim. As each day goes by, I realize that some parts of the bushes are REALLY growing out, and maybe it’s time for a mid-summer trim earlier than we anticipated.
So one morning after my exercise I casually grabbed a big paper yard refuse bag from the garage, along with my favorite cutting tools, and meandered over to the two or three bushes that from a distance seemed to need special attention. Once I got close to them, I saw that in reality the problem wasn’t so much with the original bushes we planted, as it was with other wild bushes growing up in the middle of them. I began clipping away at the branches until I could finally see the base of these stalks, and move in with my more precise and sharp cutting tool to cut them off just above the ground. That’s as close as I could get given that the roots seem to be intertwined. Once I got all the wild, weed-like bushes removed, I realized that the original bush was only half as full. The weed took up so much space that it prevented the original bush from growing. As my one bag filled up quicker than anticipated, I began to recognize the enormity of the issue. There weren’t just two or three bushes that needed attention. There were about EIGHT!
That’s when I alternated between wondering whether the lawn service just cut the bushes back versus cutting OUT the greenery that wasn’t supposed to be there in the first place. If I or my husband had paid more attention to the job that needed to be done, or how the bushes were developing, maybe we could have caught this earlier. Instead, now we needed to surgically remove the vegetation that didn’t belong there in order to nurture the greenery that was consistent with our original intent. This created more work for us, and loss for the plants themselves.
A Picture of Your Culture
Given my passion for leadership, I began to think about the lesson to be learned for organizations. Leaders who talk about the culture and behaviors that they want, but fail to follow through and ensure that everyone in their organizations know what to do and how to do it, are likely to get inconsistent results. They may be too distant from the middle and lower layers of their team, and fail to describe and model the behaviors of success. They may never stop to verify results, talk with the team or gain feedback and input from others. This neglect leads to manifestation of undesirable behaviors in their organizations.
A colleague recently told me about a manufacturing company with a relatively long product development cycle. The entry level engineers would recognize issues in the products they were asked to develop, but the culture didn’t encourage or reward open communication and identification of potential problems. So they simply kept quiet and passed them along until years later, they were much bigger issues that resulted in delays to product launch, and significant cost overruns that tarnished their brand image. Their “weeds” had a very costly consequence.
The same results occur in our professional and personal lives, where seemingly small and unchecked negative behaviors blossom until they derail careers or ruin relationships. The culture of a company or personality of an individual must be carefully cultivated based on desired outcomes that support the purpose of the organization.
Culture Keys
Culture is observable in the beliefs, behaviors, knowledge, experiences and values of an organization and the individuals in it. So how can leaders redirect focus on building a culture that aligns with the desired results of the company?
Frame the desired environment. Do you want an organization that encourages associates to come up with creative ideas; promotes wellness; or values teaming with members of diverse functional groups? What behaviors contribute to the overall performance of the company? The leadership team should determine this with input from a cross-section of the organization.
Identify the behaviors and policies to be changed. What embedded processes, norms and actions hinder the desired state? Most importantly, what leaders (and their behaviors) impede the development? In discussing this, everything should be “put on the table” for review and consideration.
Determine the daily habits to get there. Once you identify what’s wrong, replace it with what’s right. None of us get rid of bad habits without first focusing on good replacement habits.
Reward and reinforce. Identify reward mechanisms in the process, along with a means to catch deviations early on. Unwanted behaviors are generally deeply rooted, so it’s necessary to proactively dig in and stop them from spreading. You’ll need close and continual monitoring and pruning to develop your desired culture.
These high level steps obviously require a significant amount of engagement and time on the part of the leadership team, and frequently are best addressed by collaborating with culture change experts. However, the return on investment is multiplied in providing exponentially superior business outcomes. Ultimately, the desire for change to a more beneficial culture must be greater than the discomfort of going through the change process, and weeding out the negative behaviors, beliefs, experiences and values.
So what does your culture look like?